Glimpse
by Celeste3
Summary: While fighting a stray shinma Miyu gets a small glance at what it would be like if she were just a normal human girl


Glimpse  
  
Disclaimer: The Vampire Princess Miyu belongs to someone else and not me, and I do not make any profits from this work of amateur fiction.   
  
Note: This is a short little one-shot thing that just came to me suddenly when I was bored, it's based from the TV series. So please enjoy  
  
^^^^  
  
  
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I had not become the guardian. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I had just been a normal mortal girl. What would my life be like then? Would I be perky and flirtatious, like Chisato? Would I be strong and tough, like Yukari? Or would I be quiet and full of knowledge, like Hisae? If I were a normal human girl, I would not even know them.   
  
If I were just an average teen, I would still be living with my parents, on the other side on Japan. I would never have gone to their school and have met them. I would never have known Shiina or Larva either. If I were a human girl, than my love for Larva would not exist, and if it did I have to admit it would probably be directed at some human boy who didn't deserve it.   
  
But, if I were just another young mortal, I would never have been in situations like this particular one.   
  
"Go ahead Miyu, don't be cautious. I'm only offering this to you so that you might spare me. Attacking the Guardian is not a particularly wise decision if you want my opinion," gushed the shinma whom I had just asked to return to the Darkness peacefully. I have never met one shinma who I didn't have to force to go back. They all went down fighting.   
  
This shinma, Ran-joh was her name, offered the crystal orb up to me a little closer in her poet-like feminine hands. Ran-joh actually the most human looking shinma I had encountered in a long time. She would been very beautiful if it weren't for the long smooth black scaly tail, the pure glowing black eyes, the black horns on her head and shoulders, and of course the feathery black bat-shaped wings.   
  
Shiina jumped onto my shoulder and peered at the orb with her all-seeing eye. "Hmm, I see no traps or dark magic or anything particularly life-threatening. Perhaps she is telling the truth," my little rabbit looking friend chirped.   
  
"Miyu, be careful," Larva warned all the same, getting into an attack stance with his scythe.   
  
I nodded, nervously, and took a step closer. Ran-joh had the power to alter a person's body and past and show them what could have been. She feeds off the earth, from plants and forestry, not from animals or humans like other shinma. She seemed rather harmless to me, and if she doesn't attack me like she said she wouldn't, and I find out just what her powers are and their strengths, I might have the heart to let her go.   
  
I took another step closer, calling forth my flame, just in case. I looked into the orb.   
  
I saw myself, a slightly older and more developed version. I still had my same hairstyle, only now I was wearing modern clothes, not a school uniform or my kamono. I was smiling sweetly, talking and nodding to bubbly girls I assumed from the image were my friends in a crowded area, a food court I assumed.   
  
Someone, a male around my age I guess -his back was facing my view through the orb-, walked passed my group of friends and I. He paused to greet us, particularly me, and walked off again. Whatever he said caused me to smile and blush slightly.   
  
"See Miyu, I can change you back into a human, age you slightly if you wish, and take you back home. I can give you a social status, Miyu," Ran-joh offered.   
  
The image shifted. I gasped. My parents! There they were, also wearing modern clothes, business suits, the both of them, and being active at the office and at home. They helped me with my schoolwork and were active in my life. We lived in a newer house in the country, and we had the modern entertainment set ups and transportation and accessories. We had all that a normal average human family might have in this day and age. All I saw was happiness and content.   
  
Seeing that, I knew that it was an illusion.   
  
I drew back sharply, increasing the intensity of my flame. The Ran-joh was startled and looked slightly insulted. "What is the matter, Miyu? You do not like the world that I could create for you?"   
  
"No, I like it very much. The problem though is that it would not be realistic enough," I answered.   
  
The shinma drew the orb back to herself. "How so? It is the life I can rebuild and fix for you as you would have it, with no flaws at all."  
  
"Yes, that is the problem. Even the life I would want for myself must have its ups and its downs. It cannot be perfect all the time, that's what makes life exactly that, bad things, as well as the good must be apart of life so people can grow from the experience of that. Life is imperfect if it is flawless," I answered.   
  
With a hurt and confused expression, Ran-joh clutched the orb to her like some precious infant, cradling it. "No one has every refused before...." She blinked, as if she were in shock. I doubt shinma can go into shock.   
  
"I do thank you for the kind offer and am sorry that I cannot have it, but you must return to the Darkness now," I said softly, waiting for a reaction. In the corner of my eye I saw Larva stiffen.   
  
"No, the world I can create is perfection," Ran-joh said more to herself than to me. She looked up at me, eyebrows as black as her waist-length hair coming together in a sneer. "You cannot refuse me!" she cried out, and threw her orb at me.   
  
Seeing as how she was cradling that thing before, I would never have expected her just throw it at me. Yet there it hurdled at me, and I was too slow to react as it hit me square in the chest, exploding into a white liquid light and spreading all over my body. I tried in vain to summon my flame to destroy the light that was quickly devouring me, but to no avail. I called out for Larva as I physically tried to brush the light off. It kept coming, slightly too warm for comfort and a thick jelly feeling. It enveloped my face as I sucked in some air. My eyesight soon followed as I fell to the ground and was completely incased in the substance. I blacked out a few moments later.   
  
^^^^  
  
I snapped up in my bed to the sound of my alarm going off in a cold sweat. It wasn't light out yet and I had lost my bed sheets in my sleep and was now shivering.   
  
It was all a dream, right? I was never fighting monsters with fire I could control and a man in a mask, right? It was just a silly dream. An odd one, probably the most unusual one I'd ever had.   
  
Slowly I leaned over to shut my alarm off, pulling up my bedding with the moons on it in the process and finding my stuffed bunny with the ear flopped over one eye. Huh, that's odd, my bunny looks like that rabbit creature I was talking with in my dream. I stared at the stuffed creature for a minute, just comparing it to the one in my dream. They seemed so similar.   
  
"Honey, time to wake up," I heard my mother call sweetly from the other side of my door. Her voice was comforting, but some reason it didn't seem as familiar as it should have.   
  
I got up and made my bed absent mindedly, then got my schoolbooks together before I set out my uniform. It was green, but I felt as though I saw supposed to have a gray one. Nothing seemed right and familiar this morning, as if I weren't supposed to be here. I wanted to go some where else, but where that some where else was, I couldn't recall.   
  
I stepped in front of my full-length mirror and brushed and did up my hair in my favorite red silk ribbon. Funny, that ribbon was the only thing I seemed to recognize so far that felt normal. Before I put on my school uniform I looked at myself in the mirror, like I always do. I gasped.   
  
There on my chest right below my collarbone was an angry purple and red bruise about the size of a basketball. Where did that come from?! It looked like it should hurt quit a bit, but yet it didn't. I don't recall ever being hit by anything recently, but how could it just have formed in my sleep? I touched it, but it didn't hurt. How strange. The mark on my chest looked just like the kind of wound I would receive in my dream where the monster hit my with that glass thing of hers.   
  
I looked at the mark and at the ribbon in my hair. They were the only things that felt normal this morning. Everything else felt distant, as if it weren't really mine. I wish I could remember what the monster and I were fighting about.   
  
The wind outside my window rattled the cherry tree branches, hitting my window and making unnerving scratching noises. Funny how it always seems like something is saying your name in the wind. I could've sworn I heard someone call out my name sadly.   
  
I looked back at the mirror, then had a second shock for this morning.   
  
Although I was wearing my green school uniform, my image in my mirror was wearing a gray one, and she was pale, and most disturbing of all was that her eyes glowed a gold color. I stood there, shocked. Finally, to test it, I raised my hand and waved. The image did the same. I raised my other hand and touched the mirror. So did my other self on the other side of the mirror.   
  
Suddenly, my other self reached through the mirror and laced her strong fingers in my weak ones, pulling me closer. I should have screamed, but for some reason I didn't. Someone was calling my name. It sounded almost like my father's, but not really.   
  
The image of another me shifted into something else. The hands that held my fingers moved up and started swiping at my face, as if there was something in the way that was obstructing my breathing. Those hands were now two times a normal person's length should be, and were bleach white with long red nails. My other image had shifted into that of the masked man I had seen in my dream, and he was now shaking me through the mirror and calling my name, as if to wake me up.   
  
I was so scared I couldn't move. This can't be real. This person can't be real. It's all in my head. None of this is real. I felt nostalgia, and I wanted to go somewhere, some deep dark wooded barren area. The man shaking me seemed familiar and comforting. I wanted to take off his mask and see his face, but I knew I shouldn't. If I could just remember his name from in my dream maybe I could get him to stop shaking me and have him answer my questions.   
  
He seemed worried when I didn't answer him. His concern for me made me feel bad, and I wanted to answer the man in the mirror and reassure him that I was ok, but I couldn't recall his name. I put my hand on his cold one, and he seemed to pause with confusion. I opened my mouth to tell him to calm down, but I couldn't speak. I had to remember his name!   
  
"Larva!" It came to me suddenly just like that. I remembered everything then so suddenly.   
  
I wasn't at home, this home wasn't real. Larva was real, the image of the other me in the mirror was real. This me wasn't real. I had to go fight that monster or else it would continue to destroy people's lives and sense of reality.   
  
"Larva!" I called out again, and suddenly I couldn't breath. Something hot and bright was keeping me from sucking in air. I became dizzy, and I passed out again.   
  
^^^^  
  
I woke up with a gasp, coughing violently. Larva had managed to rip the liquid light substance off me and wake me up. He helped me stand as I brushed the last of it off.   
  
I called forth my flame once again, glaring at Ran-joh, who stood in shock at me awakening. "How can this be? Nobody can escape from my spell! Nobody!" she wailed in horror, snarling.   
  
"Ran-joh, for that cruel illusion that you have just put me through, I will force you," I sent the flame to consume her, "into the Darkness!" I watched the shinma twist in fear and pain as it was reduced to ash and put back into the Darkness.   
  
I sighed sadly. "Miyu, are you alright?" Larva asked, still supporting me.   
  
"I saw it, Larva," she sent me to the world were I was normal," I said, starting to lead us back home. "All of this fighting and such was all just a nightmare in that world. It seemed a little off and unfamiliar, but it also felt right and comfortable, like that was how it was supposed to go, but only now did I just get it right. I couldn't figure out what was wrong."   
  
"Miyu, I'm sorry," Larva answered apologetically.   
  
I turned around and hugged him. And hug that tried to express my deep unconditional love for him. "No Larva, it was you who brought me back, you who made everything right and normal again. Without you to guide me back, I probably would have been stuck there forever," I squeezed him a little harder. "Thank you, Larva. I love you."   
  
He squeezed me back, and we continued our walk back home.   
  
The End 


End file.
